James Corden must be more or less numb to reviews by now. In his short career, he's already enjoyed praise for his work on The History Boys and Gavin and Stacey, but also unanimous derision for Lesbian Vampire Killers and the Horne and Corden show. It would take a diagnosable depression to prevent him savouring a rave of these proportions, though.

"One of the funniest productions in the National's history," Michael Billington pronounces. Charles Spencer goes further: "The show's crowning glory is James Corden," he writes in the Daily Telegraph. "[He] turns the play's great set piece in which he simultaneously serves dinner to his two masters into one of the most uproarious scenes of farcical comedy I have ever witnessed ... I found myself physically helpless with laughter." Believe me: these guys don't say stuff like this every day.

The play is a reworking by Richard Bean of Carlo Goldoni's 1743 commedia dell'arte classic, Servant of Two Masters. Bean adapts the setting to the Brighton gangland of 1963, with the central Harlequin character (whom Corden plays) recast as an out-of-work musician. Like everything else about the show, this wheeze is unanimously admired.

"Astonishing," is what Henry Hitchings calls the show. "Bean has done to Goldoni what Goldoni did to his forerunners. His writing luxuriates in the copiousness of comic tradition and honours the possibilities of improvisation, but is also packed with brilliantly original lines." "Richard Bean's play is fantastic in both senses," says Quentin Letts. "It is a work of fantasy, duly staged, at times with so much panache by director Sir Nicholas Hytner that audience members clutch their chests with pained laughter ... I thought I was going to keel over towards the end of the first half, so short was I of the old gasping stuff." "I am astounded by James Corden," says Michael Coveney. "For as long as he can stay in the production, this is certain to become one of the biggest hits in the National's history."

And on it goes. Here's Paul Taylor: "Corden makes a triumphant comic return to the National ... One Man, Two Guvnors, one massive hit." Here's David Benedict: "The production lifts audiences from mere happiness to eye-watering, comic hysteria ... [Corden's] ceaseless connection with the audience – including with hapless individual theatregoers – is in the Dame Edna league."

Hell, even the Sun mucks in. "Slapstick comedy, double entendres, an amazing cast and even a Corden xylophone solo amounts to staggering value for money and a proper old-fashioned giggle," declares its mighty Bizarre column. "It couldn't be further from the stuffy or pretentious theatre that blokes wearing cravats and cords enjoy." Au contraire, mate: those blokes gave it five stars too.

Do say: I always admired his work on ITV's World Cup Live

Don't say: Whatever Corden does next is going to be the flop of the century.

The reviews reviewed: The funniest thing Corden's ever done. And also very funny.